Lionel White (9 July 1905 – 26 December 1985) was an American journalist and crime novelist,[1] several of whose dark, noirish stories were made into films. His books include The Snatchers (made into a film as The Night of the Following Day by Hubert Cornfield starring Marlon Brando), The Money Trap (made into a movie by Burt Kennedy starring Glenn Ford and Elke Sommer), The Big Caper (made into a film by Robert Stevens starring Rory Calhoun), Death Takes the Bus, Clean Break (adapted by Stanley Kubrick as the basis for his 1956 film, The Killing),[2] and Obsession (adapted by Jean-Luc Godard as the basis for his 1965 film, Pierrot le fou) and by the Finnish director Seppo Huunonen for the 1974 film The Hair (Karvat) and Rafferty, adapted by 1980 Soviet Lenfilm production of the same title.

White (also known as L.W. Blanco) had been a crime reporter and began writing suspense novels in the 1950s. He wrote more than 35 books, all translated into a number of different languages. His earlier novels were published as Gold Medal pulphard-boiledcrime fiction, but when Duttons began a line of mystery and suspense books, he also wrote for them.